We just received the news that our dear Dhamma father, Goenkaji, passed away peacefully at the ripe age of 90 at his residence in Mumbai on Sunday, 29th September, 2013 at 10:40pm, Indian Time.

May he be happy, peaceful & liberated.

Just keep breathing in and out like this. Don't be interested in anything else. It doesn't matter even if someone is standing on their head with their ass in the air. Don't pay it any attention. Just stay with the in-breath and the out-breath. Concentrate your awareness on the breath. Just keep doing it. http://www.ajahnchah.org/book/Just_Do_It_1_2.php

Much respect to him, for all the good he did, helping so many in the practice of Buddhist meditation. A life truly well-lived.

Then the Blessed One, picking up a tiny bit of dust with the tip of his fingernail, said to the monk, "There isn't even this much form...feeling...perception...fabrications...consciousness that is constant, lasting, eternal, not subject to change, that will stay just as it is as long as eternity." (SN 22.97)

Although not a follower, he offered me the opportunity to have the most profound experience in my life. Forever grateful.

He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness: 'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.' (Jhana Sutta - Thanissaro Bhikkhu translation)

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

I am grateful for a teaching that changed my life, the well-organized retreats in which the teaching was presented, and a venue for Dhamma service that has had an amazing impact on my happiness. May all beings share in his merits.

"As I am, so are others;as others are, so am I."Having thus identified self and others,harm no one nor have them harmed.

Some years ago I had an opportunity to attend a public gathering where Goenkaji would address the assembled. Sadly I was in that low phase of avoiding Vipassana and meditation altogether (because I was not getting results to my unreasonable expectations) and chose not attend. Now I will forever regret it.

"He, the Blessed One, is indeed the Noble Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened One;He is impeccable in conduct and understanding, the Serene One, the Knower of the Worlds;He trains perfectly those who wish to be trained; he is Teacher of gods and men; he is Awake and Holy. "--------------------------------------------"The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One, Apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation, Leading to liberation, to be experienced individually by the wise. "